In communications systems such as Wideband CDMA (WCDMA), the propagation channel through which a signal is transmitted affects the quality of the signal received by a receiver such as a mobile telephone or similar mobile communications device. Various different receiver architectures, such as rake receivers and equalisers, are known and are used to negate the detrimental effects of the propagation channel on signals. The different receiver architectures each have their own strengths and weaknesses. For example, a rake-based receiver typically provides higher quality signal reception than an equaliser-based receiver when there is an almost perfect (line of sight) propagation channel, whilst in a propagation channel which gives rise to several multipath components, an equaliser-based receiver typically provides higher quality signal reception than a rake-based receiver.
Typically a receiver used in a mobile communications device such as a mobile telephone is based on a single receiver architecture, and thus the device suffers from the weaknesses of the receiver architecture on which it is based, in that it is most effective in certain propagation channel conditions, and becomes less effective in channel conditions which differ from these conditions. As users of such devices tend not to remain stationary, the conditions of the propagation channel through which signals are received by the receiver tend to change, sometimes rapidly, and this can lead to a marked decrease in the quality of the received signal, which is manifested as a degradation in the performance of the device, for example in reduced speech quality.